Paralyzed woman controls robotic arm, sips coffee

Electrodes implanted in the brain were used to control mechanical motion.

Performing even a simple movement is a rather complicated process. First, the brain has to signal its intent to perform an action, which then gets translated into the specific motions that are required to achieve that intention. Those motions require a series of muscle contractions; the signals for these need to be sent out of the brain, through the spinal cord, and to the appropriate destination.

For most people who suffer from paralysis, it's really these later steps that are affected—most of the setup can still go on in the brain, but damage keeps the signals from making their way to the muscles. If there were a way to eavesdrop on the brain, it might be possible to identify an individual's intent and translate that into some form of useful action.

This may sound like science fiction, but significant progresshas been made in the area. As far back as 2006, researchers were already reporting that electrodes placed in a person's motor cortex would allow them to manipulate an on-screen object in a three-dimensional environment. More recently, monkeys with a similar implant were hooked up to a robotic arm, which they learned to use to perform some simple tasks.

Now, we've taken the next big step. Humans carrying similar implants were hooked up to a robotic arm, and they demonstrated that they could direct it to perform some simple tasks. Then one of them used it to take a sip of coffee.

The two individuals involved were implanted with the same device (termed "BrainGate") that had been used in the earlier experiments in which some individuals controlled a cursor. One of them, in fact, has been carrying the implanted electrodes for over five years now. That's quite significant, as scar tissue often forms at the site of the implants, and interferes with their ability to record brain activity. In this case, the activity readings had dropped somewhat over the years but were still able to generate sufficient signals for the system to work.

The hardware sits inside the primary motor cortex in the brain, where 96 electrodes listen in on the local activity of the neurons. By today's standards, that's not a lot of electrodes, but the BrainGate has the advantage of having been approved for use in test subjects by the FDA. The output gets fed into a computer system which can analyze the activity in real time.

Two different robotic arms were used during the experiments (The DLR Light-Weight Robot III from the German Aerospace Center and the DEKA Arm System). For both of these, the authors asked the subjects to watch as the arm went through a programmed series of movements. While watching, they were asked to imagine that they were controlling the arm. These imaginings set off activity in their motor cortex, which the computer dutifully tracked. Once the system was trained on this activity, the system was switched so that the participants were given control of the arm.

For the first task, they were asked to grasp a rubber ball attached to a stand that was easy to topple over. One subject, a 58-year-old woman, was able to reach the target successfully about half the time with the DLR arm; her rate went up to 70 percent with the DEKA system. The second participant, a 66-year-old male who has had the implant for five years, managed to hit the target over 95 percent of the time. The rate dropped for successfully grasping the ball but remained impressively high.

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Pleased with this success, the researchers filled a plastic bottle with coffee, placed a straw in it, and asked the woman to have a drink. Out of six trials, they had to keep her from knocking it on the floor twice, but the other four times she successfully had a drink.

The success rates weren't enormous, but these experiments were really pretty limited. As noted above, it should be possible to get far more electrodes into the human motor cortex, providing a finer-grained view of the activity there. Plus, humans have the ability to learn how to control things better with practice, so more time with the existing systems may produce better results. Finally, in many systems, neurons rearrange their connections based on activity. If the participants used the arm as part of their daily routines, it's possible that the system would start seeing clearer signals that are easier to interpret.

It's about time that more progress is being made on brain-computer interfaces. Maybe I'm being overly harsh but looking at it from the outside, progress in this area seems to have been slow.

That is because you are used to the world of computers. Once you start interfacing anything, whether it is a drug, an implant, or anything at all with a human, there are safety and ethical concerns that have to be addressed. Usually research groups like this actually have someone as part of the project who's job is to evaluate and address the ethical components, and often they have to go before a board for an ethical review before they can proceed.

The Warrior's bland acronym, MMI, obscures the true horror of this monstrosity. Its inventors promise a new era of genius, but meanwhile unscrupulous power brokers use its forcible installation to violate the sanctity of unwilling human minds. They are creating their own private army of demons.

I can see the usefullness of this... someone who's paralyzed could have this implant, connected to a laptop, or a tablet, and could theoretically have two robotic arms for things they would need. They would probably, unfortunately, still be confined to a wheelchair, due to potential balance issues of a two-legged walker. However, they would be able to perform simple tasks, and probably as they learn to use the new system, perform increasingly complex activities with their new robotic arms.

My ambition is now to survive long enough to have my brain transferred into a robot body once my current one becomes too delapidated for me to continue to support myself independently. It looks like we might be only 40 or 50 years away from that, so I guess I'll start saving now...

I'm stunned that this is possible with only 96 electrodes. 96!Imagine what will be possible when we're eventually implanting 1920 x 1080 wafers with 2 million nanotube electrodes and built in wireless.

I LOVE tech like this. Prosthetics has always been one of my favourite areas of mechanical tech (thanks to Star Wars and Terminator) and the advances we're making in bio-mechanical interfacing are really promising.

Jesus. We're talking about a paralyzed person controlling a robot arm with her brain for the first time ever, and you're complaining that the success rate isn't enormous?!? My god, what would count as an huge success in your book, a complete cyborg exoskeleton that flies? Heck, it's even called a "BrainGate" - doesn't get much more science fictional than that!

This is flat out astounding. We're living in a fantastic age where the blind can see and the crippled can reach out, with arms of steel and plastic brought to life by wires and fields. Honest to god cybernetic organisms, man and machine together bringing hope of healing to what was formerly a life sentence. I don't have words for how much this makes me smile.

"Progress is slow"? Well, people have only been dreaming of curing the paralyzed for what, all of human history until now? Rock on, you amazing roboticists. These are early days still, and I have no doubts that before too long, gentlemen, we really will have the technology to rebuild him (and her) better.

I often wake up in the night and weep because I was born a hundred years too early to get my own exoskeleton.

I did too until I remembered I already have a nice self-repairing biodegradable one. It's a pretty sweet piece of kit, fully reprogrammable and completely wireless too. It's a bit high maintenance and consumable use with messy waste output, but the replicating feature is nicely implemented; haven't seen that in metal ones yet.

The Warrior's bland acronym, MMI, obscures the true horror of this monstrosity. Its inventors promise a new era of genius, but meanwhile unscrupulous power brokers use its forcible installation to violate the sanctity of unwilling human minds. They are creating their own private army of demons.

This quote always comes to mind for these types of stories.

Nonsense, you need to look at this from the other side of the equation.

First of all, congrats to the team, this is a momentous step in making the everyday more accessible to those of us who have a completely different set of hurdles to overcome. Science might generally be seen as an ivory tower, but when stuff like this happens, it makes you want to sit down and take a breath. This is amazing, and, let's be honest, could be a great pick-up line if used correctly

Second, I find it strange, but moments like this remind me more deeply of my humanity. Say what you will about hyperbole, but this just seems like a wonderful example of humanity. I hope this project takes off, and soon those with brain and spinal cord injuries won't have to worry about wheelchairs any more.

This is very interesting. After reading about the guy driving using mind controlled limbs...made me think about how sobriety would affect these limbs vs real limbs. I think stuff in this area will allow us to study the disconnect between controlling the physical motor skills and vs dictating actions.

Would a computer be able to better interpret our intentions regardless of intoxication? Are these individuals still using their motor controls from their brain or does the computer just sense what action is being called and perform afterwards.

This is very interesting. After reading about the guy driving using mind controlled limbs...made me think about how sobriety would affect these limbs vs real limbs. I think stuff in this area will allow us to study the disconnect between controlling the physical motor skills and vs dictating actions.

Would a computer be able to better interpret our intentions regardless of intoxication? Are these individuals still using their motor controls from their brain or does the computer just sense what action is being called and perform afterwards.

I can comment on that to an extent, as i just took a pscyhology course (well over 100% overall grade, thanks to extra credit assignments in addition to getting the core work near perfect) that covered this cursorily. The problems with intoxication are two-fold here, as it affects the part of the brain that processes perception and processing of sensory data, as well as passing motor instructions to the relevant parts of the body. The perception issue could make you issue erroneous commands (you think it's here, it's not really right there, so you aim for the wrong target points), and depending on where sensors are located, the particular actions your brain says to make could be distorted. I think the larger issue would be with sensory input and interpretation, which no form of implant could bypass with any technology currently in even as early as the idea stage.

It danged near took my breath away for a moment when I saw this on the evening news. What's even more awesome to think about is that someday (perhaps not too far away), some folks will view this video with a nostalgia similar to that with which we now view Model Ts.